Sir William Petty (1623-1687) / by T. Percy C. Kirkpatrick.

  • Percy Kirkpatrick
Date:
[June, 1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir William Petty (1623-1687) / by T. Percy C. Kirkpatrick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    -constituted on lines similar to those of the Royal Society of London, and the draft of its first rules and the “Advertisements ” of its aims, in Petty’s handwriting, are still preserved. The chief duty of the Rector was ‘ ‘ to preside at all the meetings, to regulate the discussions thereat, so that there bee noe interruption, cavills, heat or confusion, but that everyone have fair liberty of proposing and speaking his mind, and that as briefly and pertinently as may bee.” The Minutes of this Society are preserved in the British Museum (B.M. Add. MS. 4811) and they show the active interest Petty took in its work. Next to his statistical and social enquiries the subject which seems to have been nearest to Petty’s heart was navigation, or indeed everything connected with what he calls “ the greatest and noblest of all machines : a Shipp. ’ ’ Both the King and the Duke of York were deeply interested in ships, and Petty had great hopes that they would pay for, or adopt for the Navy, his design of the sluce-boat, or as it is more commonly known the “ double-bottom.” Of this boat, which absorbed much of Petty’s time and energies, there were four examples. The first, known as the Simon and Jude, but later as the Invention, was built in 1662. It consisted of two cylindrical hulls or bottoms joined together by a platform, and although it was very rough in its construction, it won a race in Dublin bay from three competitors, carrying off the prize “ a flagge of Silke charged with a guilded harpe and in a wreath of Laurell above, and in a scrole beneath this inscription Proemium Regalis Societatis Velociori. ” In the next year a larger boat, with hulls clinker-built instead of cylindrical, was launched in July, and within a few weeks it had won for Petty a wager of £50 in a race to Holyhead and back. This vessel “ Invention II,” was on the suggestion of the King brought to England in October. It was at Dover in January, 1664, but its subsequent history is not recorded. A new boat, “the great double-bottom,” built in England-was launched in December, 1664, and was christened by the King “ Experiment.” This boat sailed with cargo to Oporto in the following year, but on the return journey, her necessary crew of fifty men having been reduced to seventeen by the press gang of the “ Dragon frigate,” she was lost with all hands in a storm in which some fifteen other vessels “ miscarried.” The fourth vessel the “ S. Michael,” was not tried till December 1684, and she proved to be a complete failure. William Molyneux writing of her said: “ She performed soe abominably, as if built on purpose to disappoint in the highest degree every particular that was expected from her.” Her crew refused absolutely to go to sea in her, so, as Molyneux said “ the whole design is blowne up.” Petty remained convinced of the correctness of his ideas about the double-bottom, but he said: “ if I can find just cause for it, I will write and publish a Book against my Selfe, soe much doe I prefer truth before Vanitie and Imposture.” He died before he found this “just cause,” and modern designers have not yet made an unqualified success of
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